the Fragile situation

"Living in the buffer zone or what you may call no man’s land between Baghdad’s Sunni -dominated Adhamiyah district and the Sadr City area dominated by the Mahdi Army, which is a Shia militia, I know how bad tensions between the two sides can get. I remember a couple of years ago when sectarian fighting – one might even call it civil war - was at its peak.
At the time, mortars and Russian-made Grad artillery missiles flew back and forth between the two areas in north Baghdad. Whenever there was a bombing in Sadr city, the Mahdi Army would retaliate, lobbing mortars into Adhamiyah. The tit-for-tat assaults eventually led to construction of massive concrete blast walls to separate the two districts and the two sides.

For many Baghdad residents, a string of recent bombings in the city’s neighborhoods has resurrected memories of those bad old days. And those attacks are putting people on edge – again."
Great Baghdad